8 tradeaboat.com.au
My Promise
In my recent columns, I didn’t say as much but I keep tight
promises with myself, well apart from cutting back on
most of life’s indulgences. One I put on myself recently was
to keep the newly-reborn Trade-a-Boat magazine at over
200 pages per issue. I know this is a lot less than over 400
seen in the glory days in the early 2000s but considering
the ad to editorial page mix, I consider my team and I are
doing more than an impressive job. Just take a look at this
issue, we are well over 200 pages (240 by my inconsistent
counting) with more than half dedicated to stories, yarns
and testing; a hell of a lot more than what was normally
seen a decade ago. It represents a lot of work by the likes of
the two Johns the two Kevs and the two Andrews but also
we have new faces in the expanded travel and destination
arena. So much has gone into this issue that my most
immediate team of Sean and yet another John have been
pushed to their limits. To those two in particular I give my
thanks, again.US INVASION PT
Some people took what happened a decade back, the
invasion of cheap new and used US boats, to be the death
knell for our locally-built product, but a resurging local
dollar saw confidence and sales flow back into our boats
more recently. What has happened since has been a
concerted efort to devalue the US dollar and an internal
push to create better global competitiveness in US made
boats, the outcome, our second wave is upon us. I look
around the premier dealers in Australia and most now carry
at least one US-made brand with confidence strong that
they will succeed with them, even with the exchange rate
no longer at all-time highs. No longer reliant solely on the
exchange rate, the boats we see hitting our shores remain
price-competitive. Locals be warned, the likes of Sportsman,
Wellcraft, Pursuit, a resurgent Sea Ray are producing mass
quantities of competitive boats.
What does it leave us? The chance to build the best boats
for our conditions with more focus on personalisation and
customisation, two things US-made boats will struggle to
match. Our best brands will have the chance to compete
but they may have to look at how they can diferentiate
themselves from the imports on more than just price. That
or hope for the unlikely chance our government goes back
to protectionism and throws tarifs on import.
Safe boating,
TimNEWS, PRODUCTS AND FEATURES start on page 10
EDITORIAL
SENIOR EDITOR Tim van Duyl
DEPUTY EDITOR John Panozzo
DESIGNER Stephen Seagull
CONTRIBUTORS John Willis, John Ford, Kevin Green, Kevin Smith,
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Trade-A-Boat is printed in Australia with a
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